Contacts
Contacts are the core of your CRM. The initial view of the Contacts module is organized in a grid view. With X2CRM, you can search through contacts based on matching criteria, organize lists of contacts with attribute filters, view contact location heat maps, and more.
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Point 1
The Grid View provides easy access to the data in a specific module. This is a link to Grid View. Notice the user may choose what columns of data to display. You may drag and drop the columns in the order desired. Changes made to the order of columns or what columns to display will stay in the new form until changed again.
Point 2
The blank line under the column names is the filter line. Each column can be filtered by the data value entered. You may enter data into more than one column to filter more specifically.
When clicking on a module, such as contacts, accounts or marketing, all of your records will typically be listed in a grid view. There are several ways to organize the data:
To sort a Column – click on the name of the column and it will sort in ascending order. Click again and it will sort by descending order.
Filter a Column – In the blank cell between the name of the column and the data you can filter the contents of that column by entering what you want to find. For example, you know the Contact’s first name is Sam but that is all you know. Type Sam in the blank cell below Name and click Enter. The system will show any entry that includes “sam” somewhere in the name. You can narrow the search with more specific data.
The left hand column displays what Actions the user may perform on any specific screen. In the Grid View the User can click and create a Contact List, Create a Contact, Import or Export Contacts, View the Contact on a Map, Save the Maps and Quick Create a Contact.
There are three Grid View option buttons located at the top of the grid.
The first button allows you to Clear Filters. This will remove any of the filter settings you have inputted into the data fields along the top bar.
The second button is the Columns button. This allows you to add or remove columns from your contact list grid view.
The third of these buttons is the Auto-Resize Columns function. This will change the width of the columns of the grid view to an automatically determined appropriate size, based on the length of the data in the field as well as the size of your browser window.
Mass Insertions or Deletions – You can perform actions against multiple records at a time. To choose the records you wish to effect, click on the box at the far left for each record. To choose the entire page of records click on the box at the very top of the column. A message will appear at the top asking if you want to select all the records on all pages “click here” and all boxes will be chosen. Once any record is chosen a ‘More…’ button appears in the Title Row. You can perform one of these actions to the entries that have been chosen:
Add action
Add note
Add relationships
Add selected to list (Must be a Static list)
Execute macro
Log call
Log time
Merge selected
New list from selected (Will create a Static list)
Remove tags
Update fields of selected
This can also be used to delete multiple records at a time by clicking on the “trash can” icon.
This video tutorial provides a detailed look at the features and details of using a Modules Grid View. The Grid View shows the records that are in a module. Instructions for adding columns, customizing the column layout, sorting, filtering, searching and updating records.
Click on a contact’s name from any screen in X2CRM to View the contacts details.
Edit Contact allows you to update contact information. You can also edit a single field by clicking on the Edit Field box you will find at the far right of each field. You can use Share Contact to draft an email with the contact’s record details in the body. Delete Contact erases the contact record from your database. Please note that this cannot be undone!
Send Email drafts an email addressed to the contact. You can also use the mail icon, highlighted in orange along the top bar menu, to email the contact. Both of these options bring up an email draft field within the record page.
There are many additional tools you can use under the left hand actions column, highlighted in purple. Attach a File/Photo allows you to upload media associated with the contact. Please note that there is also a an image gallery widget, where you can upload and see a thumbnail of your images.
Quotes/Invoices initiates a new quote for the contact. You can add line items and make pricing adjustments all from one screen. This can also be used to associate what products you are working on with the Contact without actually sending a Quote. Subscribe will send an automated email update to you whenever the contact’s record is updated.You can quickly view the customer’s current process stages. You can also view a complete overview of interactions with the record in graph form in the Action History chart.
View and edit a contact’s tags. Drag and drop from the tag widget, highlighted in red, or double click within the tag field, to instantly create a new tag. You can view and delete your existing tags with the tag manager.
Set the contact’s deal confidence, highlighted in the bright green box in the contact data fields. This is a five point scale of your confidence in the sales opportunity associated with the contact. This scale is also important for your sales pipeline chart. The five point scale is:
1: Low
2: Growing
3: Forecast
4: Committed
5: In the bag.
The widget highlighted in blue in the image above is called the Publisher. This widget will allow you to create, complete, and view a history of actions, appointments, calls, emails, web activity, and more. To create a new event, select one of the tabs highlighted in red in the image to the right.
Use the publisher to easily log a call (or attempted call). If you like, you can select a quick note to expedite your call log. These are preset comments you can append to your call log. You can, of course, modify the contents of the quick note dropdown menu from the dropdown editor in X2Studio.
Aside from time spent on the phone, you can also simply log timespent working on a record. Whether it’s background research or case analysis, you will be able to log how much time you’ve spent working on topics related to the contact and what that time was spent doing.
Create a new action associated with the contact. Just as in the full action editor, you can set due dates, assign users, priority, visibility, and description. Edit, complete, or delete the action using the tools highlighted in the blue circle.
Add a public comment on the contact’s record that you and your team can refer to when next you interact with them.
Create a new Calendar event from the publisher. Designate an appointment time and date on your team calendar for a specific event. You can set visibility (i.e. who can see it in their own personal calendars) as well as the assigned users. Set its priority and the display color as well
You may view any publisher records specific to one event type by using the filter dropdown, highlighted in orange.
There are additional Publisher viewing options highlighted in the green box. The Toggle Text option will minimize or maximize the detail text for each record component. The Show All button will expand the entire action history chart to be displayed within one page. If you select Relationships, then the action history chart will display all actions for the record, as well as any other record with an established relationship. By clicking on any of these options again, you will unselect them and return the action history chart to normal.
The All Contacts screen displays every contact in your X2CRM system. Here you can create and populate dynamic or static lists. Dynamic lists are auto-populated based on certain attribute criteria (e.g. a tag or deal value). Static lists are manually populated and managed.
To populate a static list of contacts: first tick the boxes next to the names of the people you would like in the list, highlighted in the blue box along the left hand side. This will bring up a new menu option in the grey menu bar along the top of the contact grid, highlighted in the orange box. Click on More to open a dropdown menu containing the expanded options.
To add the contacts to an existing static list, select Add Selected to List from the More dropdown menu. A dialog box with a dropdown menu containing all existing static lists will pop up, prompting you to choose the list to which the selected records will be added.
If you wish to create a new static list from the selected contacts: click New List From Selection from the More options menu. A dialog box will pop up, prompting you to enter a name for the new list, highlighted in purple.
To view existing contact lists click Lists in the left column menu, highlighted in red.
A catalog of all contact lists is displayed. An overview of list information appears as well, displaying list name, list type (i.e. static or dynamic), list creator, and number of list members.
To create a new dynamic list click either Create Lists in the same left column menu, or “new list” near the bottom of the page, both highlighted in blue.
The minimum amount of filter parameters is one. To add more, click the blue [Add] button below the list of current attributes, highlighted in the red circle.
Set the parameters. The attribute drop down menu shows a list of all types of information that you can discriminate by. Select one.
Next, choose the comparison you want X2CRM to use to evaluate the attribute. The comparisons available will change based on the attribute type you’ve selected.
The attribute highlighted in the green box is “state”. The comparison selected is “does not contain”. The values are state abbreviations separated by commas. This means that X2CRM will evaluate the addresses of each contact, and if the state listed is Arizona, Nevada, or Oregon, it will not include that contact in the list.
The attribute highlighted in the blue box is “assigned to”. The value brings up a list of your X2CRM users. To select multiple users hold down the control key as you click.
Use the Export to CSV option to save the contact list as an exportable .csv file. Use the option to submit a .csv file and extract a contact list.
To Import Contacts using a .csv template, first fill in a CSV file where the first row contains the column headers for your records (e.g. first_name, last_name, title etc). Please have a look at our wiki page on importing contacts to see technical specifics about importing from .csv format.
The application will attempt to automatically map your column headers to our fields in the database. If a match is not found, you will be given the option to choose one of our fields to map to, ignore the field, or create a new field within your X2CRM system.
If you decide to map the “Create Date”, “Last Updated”, or any other explicit date field, be sure that you have a valid date format entered so that the software can convert to a UNIX Timestamp (if it is already a UNIX Timestamp even better). Visibility should be either “1” for Public or “0” for Private (it will default to 1 if not provided).
Select Create Contact in the left column menu, highlighted in a red box.
Enter basic contact data, such as name, phone number, email, etc. Also enter sales and marketing info, such as lead source, deal value and status, etc. You can also submit the Contact’s username for social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Skype, and LinkedIn. These fields will create direct links to those sites.
You may also associate the lead with an Account. Start typing a name in the Account field and a list of potential existing accounts will pop up. If the Account you want exists simply choose that from the list. If no Account exists, click the “+” at the right of the Account box and a form will pop up to allow you to enter the information for a new Account.
Assign the contact to a member of your sales staff, or to sales groups. Indicate whether this contact is a public or private contact. Finally, finish by clicking the green “create” button.
The Quick Contact widget, highlighted in the blue box on the right side column, can be utilized to easily create simple new contact entries with their basic information of name, phone number, and email address, from any screen in X2CRM.
In addition, you may use the Quick Create option from the left hand side menu to simultaneously create a contact, account, and opportunity, all from the same screen.
Click to learn more about Workflow Process
The sales funnel diagram illustrates the contact’s current stage within a process, highlighted in the purple box. The ultimate goal in sales funnel management is to turn a “lead” into a “customer.” However, process stages are highly customizable and can easily be personalized with different stages.
To indicate that a contact has progressed to the next stage of the process, click the check mark within the current stage. A dialog box may prompt you for notes on the completion of the process stage.
When a stage is completed, the next stage is automatically initiated. This continues until the final process stage has been reached.
Click the [Details] option to view and edit stage information. You can backdate creation and completion dates from this window as well.
Complete each stage as your relationship with the contact grows.
The Contact Map is a chart of the geographical distribution of your customers.
X2CRM integrates its data with Google Earth to generate a heat map of your customers’ locations.
Maps are also filterable. Limit the data to those contacts assigned to a specific sales rep or sales team. Drag and drop tags into the tag field to filter out the results that do not match the tag.
You may also save a map for future reference. Data for the map settings, filter parameters, and even zoom level are saved. Because what is saved are only the map parameters, data within the map is autoupdating. This map is called “deals east of the Mississippi”.
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